By Jeff Mason, Steve Holland and Tuvan Gumrukcu WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump suggested the U.S. could lift sanctions on Turkey and allow it to buy U.S. F-35 jets as he kicked off talks with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday, but said he wanted Ankara to stop purchases of Russian oil. Erdogan’s first visit […]
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Meeting Erdogan, Trump suggests he may lift sanctions on Turkey and presses on Russian oil
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By Jeff Mason, Steve Holland and Tuvan Gumrukcu
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump suggested the U.S. could lift sanctions on Turkey and allow it to buy U.S. F-35 jets as he kicked off talks with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday, but said he wanted Ankara to stop purchases of Russian oil.
Erdogan’s first visit to the White House in about six years started off with a warm welcome from Trump. Seated side by side in the Oval Office, Trump called Erdogan a “very tough man” and said they remained “friends” while his predecessor Joe Biden was in office.
Ankara is keen to leverage the friendly personal relationship to further national interests and take advantage of a U.S. administration eager to make deals in return for big-ticket arms and trade agreements.
Still, Trump pressed Erdogan to cut off oil purchases from Russia, as he tries to put pressure on Russia’s sources for funding its war in Ukraine. Turkey, Hungary and Slovakia are the main European purchasers of Russian oil.
“I’d like to have him stop buying any oil from Russia while Russia continues this rampage against Ukraine,” Trump said of Erdogan.
Asked whether he was willing to make a deal to sell F-35s to Turkey, Trump told reporters: “I think he’ll be successful in buying the things that he wants to buy.”Trump also said he could lift sanctions against Turkey “very soon,” and that “if we have a good meeting, almost immediately.”
ANKARA HOPING FOR CLOSER US TIES UNDER TRUMP
Biden had kept Turkey at arm’s length partly over what it saw as the fellow NATO member’s close ties with Russia. Under Trump, who views Moscow more favorably and has closer personal ties with Erdogan, Ankara is hoping for a better relationship.
Trump and Erdogan – both seen as increasingly autocratic by their critics at home – had a checkered relationship during the Republican president’s first term. But since his return to the White House, their interests have aligned on Syria – source of the biggest bilateral strain in the past – where the U.S. and Turkey now both strongly back the central government.
They remain sharply at odds over U.S. ally Israel’s attacks on Gaza, which Ankara calls a genocide – a potential wild card in what are otherwise expected to be friendly and transactional talks in the Oval Office.
US SANCTIONS BLOCK F-35 SALES
The mood shift has renewed Turkish hopes that Trump and Erdogan, who have exchanged mutual praise, can find a way around U.S. sanctions imposed by Trump himself in 2020 over Turkey’s acquisition of Russian S-400 missile defenses.
That, in turn, could pave the way for Ankara to buy Lockheed Martin’s advanced F-35 fighter jets, for which it was both a buyer and manufacturer until it was barred over the S-400s.
Erdogan has said the defense industry, including the topic of F-35s and ongoing negotiations over 40 F-16 jets Ankara also wants, would be a focus of the meeting, along with regional wars, energy and trade.
Turkey, NATO’s second-largest army, wants to ramp up air power to counter what it sees as growing threats in the Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, where it neighbours Russia and Ukraine.
Erdogan told reporters that he was “ready to do whatever is needed from us” to reopen an Orthodox Christian seminary that was shut by the Turkish state in 1971 and has remained a source of contention with Greece and the European Union ever since.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Orthodox Christians worldwide based in Istanbul, also met with Trump in Washington this month and was quoted as saying he hopes the theological school on Heybeliada island can accept students next year.
Turkey, which is overwhelmingly Muslim, has in the past resisted reopening the seminary near Istanbul despite years of pressure from the European Union, which it aspires to join.
Erdogan said he would discuss the issue with Bartholomew when he returns to Turkey.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara, Jonathan Spicer and Daren Butler in Istanbul, and Mike Stone in Washington; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Humeyra Pamuk and Deepa Babington)